MICK McCarthy says his players are ‘angry with themselves’ after a fine start to the season was hit by three straight league defeats.

“You can’t say that if you’ve lost three on the bounce there is no negative reaction – of course there is,” he said. “It would be crazy to ask anybody to believe otherwise but it’s the amount of it (that counts).

“There is disappointment and frustration and I guess a bit of anger in here between all of us.

“Not at each other but with themselves, for not performing as well as we could.

“I know that because I used to get it as a player as well.

“There has to be some negative reaction but not the sort that will cause some seismic shift in how we’re going to play or what’s going to happen.

‘‘Even if we’d drawn to QPR with a really poor performance and were on eight points and had lost to Tottenham and Liverpool, we’re still not expected to beat them.

“We want to beat them and we try to beat them and had we scored against Tottenham we might well have nicked that game.

“We put up a good show in the second half against Liverpool but we’re still not expected to beat the top six teams.

“It’s not that we don’t try or don’t think we can beat them – that’s not the case and we did it last year – but it might not be this year.”